A Capella in Absentia

This is my final project for this class, but, to be quite frank, I doubt this will be the last time I post my artistic endeavors on this website. But we will leave that for another time. For my final project I created an a capella medley of songs that have been used in films that were either directed, written, or acted in by Quentin Tarantino. It starts off with the classic Bee Gee’s song, Stayin Alive which was used in the Docu-Drama Full Tilt Boogie as we see Tarantino himself walking in sync with the song, Tarantino wrote the film that the Docu-Drama is based off of, as well. The track then goes into Woo Hoo by The 5.6.7.8.’s as was seen in Kill Bill. It then segues into Rick Ross’s 100 Black Coffins, which was used in Tarantino’s last film Django Unchained. Finally it ends with Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra as was seen in Kill Bill. I called the group A Capella In Absentia because there was never a time where everyone in the group was in the same room until we came to record it. But I would like to take a moment to thank the people who helped me. They were absolutely amazing.  The other voices heard are Sarah Camilleri, Sam Domke, and AJ Guidi. This was recorded all on a Blue Snowball Microphone that I purchased, and put together on Audacity. I enjoyed working on this project, and expect to make many like it, but a little better, in the future. I also plan on doing a video for this, but that is yet to be decided on. I started off this project by picking songs that I felt would best work together. I then molded them together on audacity and began splitting up the voice parts. Afterwards, I sent the music to everyone and we decided on what songs to keep and what songs to get rid of. After which we began practicing and recording song by song until we finally got it down and recorded it all in one take. I have included the link below. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to download it and boost my self esteem a little.

http://acapellainabsentia.bandcamp.com/track/tarantino

 

Soon to be released on VHS and DVD

We were told of the guidelines for our final project, and, at first, they seemed very vague and I had immense trouble figuring out what to do. I thought that things would be a lot easier if He just told us, “I want you to write a 1000 word report on any movie we watched in class.”
But, instead, He told us that we could do practically whatever we wanted as long as it was a multimedia presentation and was related to film.
I took a second and stepped back, and it hit me.
I spent 6 years doing musicals, 3 years in choral ensembles and 5 years in band. “I have to do something with music.” I thought. But doing a cover or editing a new music video for an old song were just too easy. I could do that in, at most, a week. However, we were given a month to make this the most ostentatious, noteworthy, and intricate project we had done all year. Working alone would not be an option at this point. I began contacting people that I had attended highschool with. When I suddenly got a reply from one of the most musically gifted people I ever had the chance to work with. She said, in essence, that she would love to work with me, and that she also knew the perfect people to jump on board. After she got yesses from a couple more obnoxiously gifted people, I knew what I wanted the project to focus on. I wanted to do a medley of songs from films. Unfortunately, however, I have yet to decide what songs I wanted to do, the choices are endless. However, I know that I want the rest of the group to have some input on the choices because the best products are the ones in which everyone has fun while making it.
Still, however, that should only take about three weeks. Thereby, I had a week to do nothing, and that wouldn’t fly. So I went ahead and contacted a friend of mine to write up a music video to go along with it.
In the end, the finished product should be an a capella medley music video of songs from films (If you do not know what an a capella medley looks like check out Pentatonix).
And to make this project all I need are a couple things:

• A talented writer and cameraman ✔
• Some talented musicians ✔
• A camera ✔
• A microphone ✔

All that is left for me to do is to get with the group, and decide what songs we want to do. And I will do that before my final project proposal is posted.
Luckily the audience will be vast. Almost everyone will be able to get with it if we do this well enough. And we, as a group, also plan on sharing it on a couple of websites.
We will be using recording software similar to audacity and video editing software that we have yet to decide on. This will give me the opportunity to practice my recording and editing skills, as well as my musical composition and singing.
What do you guys think?